Notes on teaching handwriting, particularly from a Year 1 perspective at the moment.
Firstly, you may have the Targeting Handwriting seahorse books like this: to use in your class. These can be very useful but you must explicitly teach letter formation, and check it as students work. Otherwise many students will not learn the correct way to form their letters. In fact, what we are finding is that many students are coming to school already able to write many letters, but they are often forming the letters incorrectly, so in the early years there is a lot of unlearning to do! Also, don't forget that these books are also supported by a teacher resources book.
You may be wondering about pencil grips, the right paper to use, etc. I found some useful resources on the pld-literacy.org website, including Pencil Grip and Drawing Skills, as well as Which Paper and Pencil to Use. By the way, in a nutshell, the second document says that dotted thirds may make the paper too complicated for young writers.
When you are ready to make some lined paper for writing on, the best site I've found so far is the Incompetech Graphpaper site. Don't be fooled, it's great for graph paper, but near the bottom of the page you can use the Writing and Note-taking link to make plain ruled paper. You can set the line separation to anything you like, and change the colour of the lines too. Another interesting option is the lined paper available from the Statewide Vision Resource Centre in Victoria. Use their Bold Lined Masters page if you want heavy lines that stand out.
Handwriting Resources
Here are some ideas I've collected on how to teach handwriting:
The first way is to work through the seahorse book. Most people seem to agree that can be a bit boring and it isn't clear that it is very effective - as with everything, I imagine the results depend a lot on how well you use the resource.
Using very short sessions called "Lightning Writing". See the Lightning Writing Lesson page for how this works.
Firstly, you may have the Targeting Handwriting seahorse books like this:
You may be wondering about pencil grips, the right paper to use, etc. I found some useful resources on the pld-literacy.org website, including Pencil Grip and Drawing Skills, as well as Which Paper and Pencil to Use. By the way, in a nutshell, the second document says that dotted thirds may make the paper too complicated for young writers.
There are also some great documents available from the Handwriting Without Tears website. I have no experience with their program, but their information on Handwriting Standards by Grade appears to be extremely useful.
When you are ready to make some lined paper for writing on, the best site I've found so far is the Incompetech Graphpaper site. Don't be fooled, it's great for graph paper, but near the bottom of the page you can use the Writing and Note-taking link to make plain ruled paper. You can set the line separation to anything you like, and change the colour of the lines too. Another interesting option is the lined paper available from the Statewide Vision Resource Centre in Victoria. Use their Bold Lined Masters page if you want heavy lines that stand out.
Handwriting Resources
Here are some ideas I've collected on how to teach handwriting:The first way is to work through the seahorse book. Most people seem to agree that can be a bit boring and it isn't clear that it is very effective - as with everything, I imagine the results depend a lot on how well you use the resource.
Using very short sessions called "Lightning Writing". See the Lightning Writing Lesson page for how this works.
Practice sheets made with dotted thirds - see the Dotted Thirds handwriting page.
Useful websites
http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/content/games/writingRepeater_v6_withloop.html